Writing about Reading — and Not Blogging

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I may — may — be posting a real entry later today. At the moment, though, I’m focused on preparing my first contribution to the BookBook blog: a review of Dean Koontz’s Odd Hours.

Until then, I offer you a YouTube “Thriller” extravaganza:

First, we have the original video (embedding this video has been disabled on YouTube, so you’ll just have to follow the link if you want to see it).

Here’s the same thing (1/3 the length of the original), re-created by 1500+ inmates at the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, Cebu, Philippines:

And one of at least a couple wedding-reception versions:

…and, finally, the definitive (or at least, the most painstakingly assembled) version: Legos!

The First Blank Page

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Drawing by Edward Gorey

For reasons which I’m not sure I could articulate, I love this drawing without reservation. (Click the image for a larger version.) It’s from a page in 2007’s Edward Gorey “Page-a-Day” calendar and I’ve kept it around on various computers, trying without success to make it work as a desktop wallpaper. (Icons are inconsistently legible when layered over it.) Perhaps I must get used to just knowing about it, without ever using it in some way.

(If there’s anything guaranteed to p!ss a writer off, it’s knowing about something which can’t be used.)

“About suffering, they were never wrong…”

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Bruegel: Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

Last weekend, The Missus and I visited the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. By the time you’ve seen (say) your 500th painting in one day, it’s tempting to claim they all look pretty much alike. Tempting, and wrong. Many of them sort of blend together, true. (In the Renaissance galleries, I lost count of the number of paintings titled “Portrait of a Young Man.”) But some always stand out, and leave their hooks in place long after you’ve laid eyes on them.

The painting above was done by Pieter Brueghel the Elder in 1558; its title is Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. (You can click the image to see a larger version.) It looks unremarkable, on first glance: a fairly typical (albeit expertly done) late-Renaissance rendering of a fairly typical pastoral/nautical subject. A — yes — a landscape.

But Icarus? Where’s Icarus?

Just in case you don’t know the Greek mythological story, here’s Wikipedia’s brief version:

Daedalus fashioned a pair of wax wings for himself and his son [Icarus]. Before they took off from the island, Daedalus warned his son not to fly too close to the sun, nor too close to the sea. Overcome by the sublime feeling that flying gave him, Icarus soared through the sky joyfully, but in the process he came too close to the sun, which melted his wings. Icarus kept flapping his wings but soon realized that he had no feathers left and that he was only flapping his bare arms. And so, Icarus fell into the sea…

So then. In the painting, Icarus must be falling. Perhaps in that bright sunlight-glowing area of the sky, just right of center; such an intensely lighted area certainly draws the eye… No? Then maybe it’s what the shepherd is looking up at — after all, he’s placed dead-center in the painting, so he must be important. Right?

Well, no. Here’s where Icarus is:

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Wallowing in Unhappiness

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Per whiskey river:

As incredible as it sounds, an unhappy man does not realize that happiness is better than unhappiness. Knowing only his own concealed anguish, he worships it, which is the same as self-worship. – Vernon Howard

Sound familiar? It will if you listen in on enough writerly conversation: it’s the sound of writers who aren’t writing.

Department of Neighborhood Security

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The Missus and I live in a smallish subdivision some distance away from downtown. Nonetheless, the area around the development is all within City limits — except for the development itself, which for whatever mysterious reason has never agreed to annexation. We (TM and I) refer to it, privately, as The Principality — because it’s so much like a Monaco situation, y’know?

Anyhow, recently The Principality’s governing body (a/k/a the neighborhood association) voted to establish one of those “neighborhood crime watch” programs. You know the deal: neighbors look out for each other, particularly alert to the possibility that miscreants of one kind or another might be breaking into homes or cars and so on.

Not that we personally know of any such incidents. (I’m not saying there have been none — just that we’ve never heard of any.) …Oh, wait, yes, I’m sorry: a neighboring subdivision had its entry sign stolen. Other than that, nada.

But as we all know in the post-9/11 era, unseen threats are everywhere. In fact, a given imaginable danger is magnified in direct proportion to its invisibility. Kind of If there’s no evidence of wrongdoing, you’re just not looking hard enough.

So we have the new crime-watch thing. One key element of which, apparently, is the appointment of “block captains” to coordinate the crime-watching efforts of neighbors who live along a specific stretch of roadway. Our own block captain recently mailed us a two-page flyer providing some details. The following is, I believe, a critical excerpt (emphasis in the original):

…As your block captain, I will be asking for you to provide phone numbers, and e-mail addresses, which will allow two-way communication between neighbors and the neighborhood crime watch program. The exchange of this information will allow members of the community to provide and receive timely information regarding suspicious events and observations that have occurred. As an example, we recently had neighbors report a suspicious vehicle parked in the area. Through our communication, we also learned that the County Sheriff’s office did locate the vehicle and identify the occupants. Although on this occasion, the occupants of the vehicle did not intend to commit a criminal activity, through the effective reporting and communication of our neighbors, the individuals most assuredly would have been apprehended, had they committed a crime.

Got that? “Had they committed a crime.”

And if they didn’t, in fact, commit a crime — well, it’s their own fault they got “located” and “identified.” After all, they were in a suspicious vehicle, the dumb bastards! I’ll tell ya, what’s this world coming to when everyone can’t afford a decent, respectable, non-suspicious car?

On Writing Long: Edith Wharton

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Time change - tastes change - *I've* changed!Back in May — the 26th, to be exact — Steve King’s invaluable and always entertaining Today in Literature newsletter informed us that on that day in 1891, Edith Wharton’s first story was accepted for publication, by Scribner’s Magazine. The story was called “Mrs. Manstey’s View.”

(Yes, by the way: that’s accepted for publication — not actually published. I can’t imagine how Mr. King manages to keep all these dates organized or, for that matter, how he learns of them in the first place.)

I confess, with some embarrassment, that I have never read any of Edith Wharton’s books. (Now that I’ve written that, I guess I should commit to filling that gap in my education.) Yet I do have a few connections with her.

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These Eyes…

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Just got back from Chris & Jess’s wedding weekend…

The Missus and I stayed at a lovely hotel in DC, the Sofitel on Lafayette Square. The bathroom was especially well appointed, and among its attractions was the mirror over the sink — which, as I understand it [cough], had obviously been designed by someone who sometimes needed to apply makeup. What made it suitable for this activity was the lighting: the mirror was a large square, and every single edge was brightly lit.

At first, though, it sort of disturbed me to use the mirror but I couldn’t quite figure out why. I just wanted to conduct my business (none of it, I hasten to add, involving makeup) and get the hell away from it. It just sort of… sort of… creeped me out.

Then I realized the problem.

To wit: see anything unusual here?

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While on the Subject of Bad Memory…

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'Burning Memories' c2006 by Gerla Brakkee (sxc.hu)…as I was earlier:

In this case, however, the subject isn’t “bad memory” in the sense of “Huh? Did I just say something?” It’s more along the lines of, “Holy sh!t. Did I actually live through that?!?”

Via the MAD about Words blog (discovered, in turn, via DCWYTBMA), we have word of a definitive list — from Entertainment Weekly, of all unlikely sources — of an enormous range of recent memoirs and autobiographies:

The genre shows no signs of slowing down, though it’s difficult to imagine a narrative that’s left unexplored. ”The bar keeps going higher,” says Sara Nelson, editor in chief of Publishers Weekly. ”Well, you were a drug addict, but did you kill anybody? Well, you killed somebody, but did you do it with your bare hands? Well, you were hungry, but were you as hungry as Frank McCourt?…”

What follows is a selective list — believe it or not, we actually left some stuff out — of memoirs that have been written since 1995. (Sorry, Ms. Walters, one of the things we’ve omitted is celebrity autobiographies.) So take a look and see if your life, or something resembling it, has already been spoken for.

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Like a Candle in the Wind

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God, do I love moments of unintended poetry.

God, do I hate the ravages of age which, within minutes, can scatter those moments to the far edges of memory. Then you have to mount a whole frigging safari to recover them…

The Missus and I were on the way home from work yesterday. (We don’t work at the same place, but we do carpool. Which gives us a chance to talk, to share moments of drama and outrage from the past eight hours, to be present when the other bursts into song or, yes, poetry.)

Her boss and his wife are doing us a favor which, if they can manage it, will be done ideally sometime the next 24 hours. I hadn’t heard if it was still “on,” though, so I asked TM if she knew what the status was Actually, she said, actually, no I haven’t. She had me punch her office’s phone number into her cell phone (she was driving) so she could briefly remind her boss about it. It took 10 seconds, if that.

But the end of the conversation cracked me up. Her half of it went something like, “Uh-huh… Okay. Thanks. Just remind me in the morning, in case I forget to ask.” And then she hung up.

She saw me laughing. “What?”

“Oh, you know. Suddenly I just thought of a saying.” Which was:

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